This is the house in which I spent the first 23 years of my life. When we left the place in 1986 (when this picture was taken), the house too was just a year or so older than I was at that time. This is because my parents were the first occupants of the house. It was the start of their lives together -they both got secure jobs in a beautiful place, had wonderful neighbours who were like family and for the next two decades and more; led a life that was enviable in many ways.
But this post is about the house and the garden. I must have spent an equal amount of time indoors and outdoors, because of that garden. It was a large one- extending in front, on the side and at the back. It was also full of possibilities for a plant-loving, gardening-enthusiast young couple. All the trees that grew in that garden were planted by them- there were numerous varieties of mango, some guava trees, a large chikoo tree, a pomegranate tree and several banana trees. There was also a custard-apple tree, a mulberry tree and a ‘ramphal’ tree. We didn’t buy fruits in those days- we distributed and/or exchanged them with neighbours and friends with similar gardens! Plucking guavas off the tree and then sitting on its branches or under them while munching away at the fruit was not a treat- it was just another thing to do in the garden. My optimistic parents also tried cultivating grapes (extremely sour) and water melons (quite tiny!) but gave up on the idea. Just as they tried keeping hens in a hen house at the back of the garden. The hen house was broken into by foxes at night and we never saw those hens again. The foxes left a few feathers for us and that was the end of that experiment as well.
Then there was the kitchen garden. Here too, they had designated beds for all the vegetables that were planted. I have plucked beans, tomatoes and cucumbers from their plants, hunted for ‘bhindi’, and ‘brinjal’ among their leaves and pulled out radishes, carrots and onions from their beds. Oh and cabbages and cauliflowers too! It’s not like we were cultivating a farm; vegetables were bought every week. This was more for the thrill of growing and plucking some of our own.
Finally- the pride and joy of my parents: the flower beds! When they moved in, there were other houses too being constructed in the vicinity. My mother once told me about how both of them used to drive out on my father’s Java motorcycle, collecting unused bricks and stones from the construction sites. And how they used their findings to mark and lay out all the flower beds that lined the front of the garden. Those palm trees in the picture were planted by my mother, as well as the numerous other flowering trees and shrubs. There was a long row of ‘mogra’ trees which flowered generously in summer. We used to get bowls full of them which would then be placed all around the house. Here too, my parents tried their hand at varieties of flowers. They visited nurseries, collected seeds, saplings, planted, transplanted, grafted different species of roses, dahlias, lilies, tuberose and gladioli. There were pinks. phlox, dog-flowers, asters and chrysanthemums filling up those meticulously laid flower beds. The lawn out front would be weeded, watered and trimmed by my father and whichever gardener was in residence at the time. Watering the garden was a fun exercise in itself. Is it any surprise that most of my memories of the house are rooted (literally) in the garden?
When my father retired and we moved out, I asked them how it would feel to leave all those trees and plants behind for someone else to enjoy. They told me about some friends of theirs who had retired a few years earlier. (Since it was a sprawling campus, everyone lived in a bungalow with a garden.) Apparently, the lady of the house went to the garden and said goodbye to all the trees and asked them to keep giving fruits to the next family that would move in.
Cut to the present, July 2022. I visited the campus with my daughter and we drove past the house. I couldn’t resist stopping across the road and pointing out to her some of the trees that were visible. It’s been 36 years and a lot had changed. Finally, I mustered up the courage to walk in and request the present occupants of the house if we could go around the garden.
The house itself seemed much smaller- or maybe it was because I had grown up and older. The front stairs where my friends and I used to play endless rounds of ‘Giant Steps’ looked bite-sized. The road that led to those steps- where we had cycled and played badminton- had it always been so narrow? The garden too had shrunk. There was a compound wall now and many of the mango trees planted so lovingly by my parents- they were out of the compound and left to fend for themselves in some kind of nowhere land. The guava tree that grew outside my bedroom window had been cut down to deter bands of marauding monkeys that had started gathering there. (A good example of man-animal conflict due to decreasing forest cover). I almost wept at the sight of the fallen tree-its slender trunk burning black and rotten. It used to have the sweetest guavas and in such abundance that even the birds and squirrels could not finish them. During the monsoon, overripe guavas would fall from the branches and land with a plop on the slushy ground below. They would burst open and the air would be filled with that particularly cloying scent that over ripe guavas have. I used to dislike it and close my bedroom windows to keep it out. The banana trees that used to act like a boundary wall were gone too. The eucalyptus tree that once stood tall was still there but that too didn’t look as imposing as it used to. A lot of the space that used to be the garden had been concretised- for practical purposes, I’m sure. But…
It was like going back in time but not really. Nostalgia is all very well so long as we accept that things don’t remain the same. And when we take a physical trip down memory lane; the reality will be very different. There is also the risk that fond memories will get replaced by this changed reality. We can walk that path to relive old memories and come away with images that will clash or maybe even replace them. To try and compartmentalize both sets can be quite an exercise!
I am writing this post on my father’s birthday. It’s been 8 years since he left us. My mother lives in a much smaller house with some trees and a couple of flower beds where mostly weeds now grow. But her eyes still light up when flowers bloom on the few surviving plants she has managed to keep growing. She beams with pleasure to see the mangoes on the solitary mango tree in her garden. The tree is the descendant of one she and my father had planted all those many years ago- in another garden.
I think about taking my mother for a drive and showing her the house and garden where she and my father began an early chapter of their lives together. But then I think the better of it. Some memories should be preserved. Left undisturbed. Like a pool of calm, clear water. To throw a stone into those waters and muddy them up would be doing them an injustice. In the meantime, I shall try and sort out my muddied memories so the water can be somewhat clear again!
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